


Scenes from a Whouffaldi life

by antennapedia



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Schmoop, Sickfic, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 16:54:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antennapedia/pseuds/antennapedia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various Tumblr prompt fills, all Whouffaldi. Unconnected scenes from various lives the Doctor and Clara might have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rings?

The market on this planet was the same as the one on the last planet: jewelsmiths, goldsmiths, smiths working in metals Clara couldn't name with tools that ranged from the disturbingly invisible to the alarmingly primitive. The last market had been too flashy, too full of glowing technical things that were half-machine, half-jewelry, and Clara had made a face. The Doctor had snatched her hand-- her hand, willingly taken, with his fingers laced through hers to boot-- and run with her back to the TARDIS.

She was still in her nightie. Her _nightie_. Not that anybody seemed to notice or mind. There was no accounting for fashion.

This planet had a more subdued set of craftsmen. Craftspeople. Craftsbeings. There, that was the right word. The Doctor led her by the hand, fingers still twined with hers, through this market to a little shop in the back, where a woman was working with tools right there on a bench.

"I think you'll like these better," he said. "And they're gold, not hypertitanium. Gold is good, I like gold. Handy against Cybermen in a pinch."

Clara did like them better, though she still wasn't sure why she had to inspect a lot of gold rings on Christmas morning. The sample the smith held up to them next was wider than many rings were, and had flat planes hammered around it. A dark red jewel of some kind was set into one of the planes, flat. A jewel? Hard to say what it was, because it looked liquid. Not ostentatious. Almost like it was part of the ring.

"Oooh," Clara said, despite herself.

"That one?"

"Yeah."

The Doctor nodded and turned to the smith. "We'll take a pair of those. And we'd like them engraved. "

The smith handed the Doctor paper and a pen. The Doctor drew one of his odd circular diagrams on the paper, more carefully than usual. The smith was doing something with her left ring finger, sizing it, but Clara didn't pay any attention to it, because beside the circular diagram the Doctor had written _25-12-2014_. The date.

Clara said, "That's Gallifreyan writing? What does it say?"

"Your name." He pointed. "And mine. Well, sort of my name."

Clara's hand went to her mouth. "You're buying rings. And engraving them with our names. And the date."

The Doctor drew himself up proudly. "Didn't think I was the traditional sort, mm?"

Clara shook her head, hand still over her mouth. If she took her hand away she'd blurt something she didn't want to blurt. The Doctor still looked happy. As happy as she'd ever seen him, ever, with any of his faces. The one with the floppy hair and the bow-tie and the chin, no matter how often he'd spun around while holding her, hadn't ever had this expression on his face. It was deep and quiet and glowing. He was now peering at the jewel smith, who'd strapped a loupe to her face and had pulled out a tiny tool that looked like a dentist's pick, only it had a tip of pure glowing plasma.

How had he decided to do this? Clara reviewed what had happened in her bedroom right before they'd run out to the TARDIS. What exactly had he said. He'd clasped his hands and stood up straight and asked her to come with him. He'd held out his hand, palm-up, and she'd given him her hand in response. She'd given him her hand. Oh. Oh. He'd asked her to-- he'd asked her to marry him. And she'd said yes.

Her head went strange and her knees gave out. Clara went down to the floor.

"Clara!" The Doctor dove onto his knees on the floor next to her.

"Hey, you," she said to him. She was grinning so hard her face almost hurt.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm okay. More than okay. Totally more than okay."

His hand was under her elbow, bracing her as she got up. "What happened? Do you need anything?"

"I just-- it sort of got to me, yeah? You haven't even kissed me or anything and here we are--" She pointed at the smith working on the bench.

"Good point," he said, and he took her face in his hands and kissed her. Right there in the shop, while the jewel smith smiled at them indulgently. The Doctor, the man who was not the hugging sort, had one hand in her hair and one hand on her waist, and his tongue in her mouth, and oh! That was what it was like to kiss this version of him. He smelled like bay rum and ozone. He needed a shave. Cool fingers on the back of her head. Lean and hard, holding her close, lifting her up on tiptoes. Clara made a sound, a sound she hadn't made in a long time. The Doctor released her.

"Not here," he said, and his voice was low and rough and he sounded like she felt. "On the TARDIS. After this. If you'd like."

His eyes went wide in supplication again. Clara knew exactly what he meant.

"Yeah. I would."


	2. Far Too Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is unconscious. Clara must cope, with the help of the TARDIS. Hurt/comfort.

"Okay, okay, okay, Oswald, you have this. You can do this."

The Doctor was heavier than he looked, was all she could say. Though he'd been light in those first seconds, when she'd heaved him up onto her shoulder and run for the TARDIS. Brilliant on adrenaline, he'd said, and wasn't she glad that was true. Now she was staggering her way down the corridor hoping that the door to sickbay would appear.

It did, right in front of her, and it swooshed open.

"Thanks," she said, to the air, or rather, to the TARDIS's always-watching semi-sentient presence.

She more or less dropped the Doctor onto a lowered bed and collapsed over him. She let herself breathe once, twice, three times, then shoved herself up again. No time to waste. He'd lost a lot of blood. Weird-looking blood, slightly more orange than it ought to have been. Gallifreyan blood His clothes were soaked with it. It hadn't been a tiger that had done it. Oh, no, not a tiger. He'd been most certain of that as he'd waved his sonic around to distract it from her.

"Oh, Doctor, you _idiot_. You absolute _idiot._ What do I do now? I'm not a bloody surgeon! Dammit."

A drawer popped open. Clara lunged for it. Goo in a big tube. Gauze bandages. The goo, she'd seen that before, once. She read the label: _Healing goop, general purpose, humanoids, for the use of._ Right. That would work.

She cut the clothes from his body, because there was no way she was going to waste time trying to save that jacket. The TARDIS could make another. The TARDIS probably made them by the dozen. Cut the clothes away, bind him up, smearing the goo all over him first. Had she remembered to wash her hands first? Shouldn't she be sterilizing everything? She was too sick with fear to stop and think about this.

There he was, bare from the waist up, the worst of the gashes bandaged. Skinny chest, narrow shoulders. Blood still oozed here and there, but not badly. He was breathing. He was too pale. Way too pale. Even for a Scotsman.

A door in the wall had appeared and opened while she'd been focused on patching him up. A bag filled with slightly pink fluid hung from a rack on rollers. Clara knew what that was. She also knew that she had absolutely no clue how to stick a needle into anybody to get fluid into them.

A hologram flickered into being in front of her. A young woman, dark-hair swept back, in a dress and boots. One of the TARDIS's many manifestations.

"Do you require assistance?"

"Yeah, yeah. I do. Tell me how to get this stuff into him."

"The correct vein is here." The hologram loomed over him and pointed at the back of his hand. "Remove the cap from the needle and puncture the vein. The machinery will do the rest."

Clara closed her eyes at the last second when the needle punctured his skin. Kept them closed, turned away, and opened them to look at the fluid bag. Turned the valve. Pink liquid dripped.

Clara slid down onto the floor and put her head between her knees. She was maybe going to lose her lunch, but it was done. Whatever the hell the TARDIS had wanted to get into the Doctor's bloodstream was now getting into it. She let herself breathe normally at last. He was going to make it. No regenerations this time. No losing this face just when she'd started to let herself care for it. No losing him just when she'd started to get to know him.

"That," she said, to the TARDIS, "was far too close a call. Far far far far far far too close." She laughed until she hiccuped, and then started to cry.

She let herself cry for a few minutes, now that it was safe to cry. She went to wipe her face on her sleeve and laughed: it was stiff with blood. And her arms stung. Oh. It had clawed her first. Defensive wounds, on the outside, where she'd raised her arms to protect her face. Not badly, but she'd bled too. She stood up stiffly; her head spun, but she made it over to the sink. Washed herself off, washed the blood away until the water ran clear. Well, that cardigan was toast.

There was plenty of healing goop left. Clara smeared it over herself. She was going to make it, too, and without scarring if the label on the tube was to be believed. Magic Time Lord medicine. It took its time to work, though. The Doctor was still unconscious. She still hurt.

He looked okay, though, pinker than he had looked before. A blanket over him, a chair pulled up next to him, and Clara sat herself down to wait.


	3. The Bathrobe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is wearing a bathrobe that we might recognize. Clara doesn't, however.

He was shuffling around the TARDIS console, teacup in hand, completely oblivious to her presence. Shuffling, because he had slippers on. Clara let her eyes wander up to the deep red of the silk pajamas flapping around his skinny ankles. Gorgeous pajamas, pajamas that she envied and would certainly pinch if they had a chance in hell of fitting her, which they didn't, so she reluctantly set that idea aside. Above that, the world's most battered, ratty, frayed plaid robe, belted around his waist. The robe looked as if it had survived a Sontaran assault and at least two supernovas.

"That robe," she said.

"Mmmm?"

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why's it so--" Clara flapped a hand around.

"It's had some adventures. Or I did, rather, while wearing it. Do try to think these things through before asking me obvious questions."

"What adventures?"

The Doctor set his empty teacup down on the edge of the console. "Oh, this and that."

"Now you, _you_ , you are a dandy. You never wear anything that isn't perfect and secretly deeply flattering. Even when it's a pair of plaid trousers. So why are you wearing this?"

He waved at her dismissively. "This is flattering. Makes me look daring and dashing."

"Makes you--"

"Makes me look like an adventurer. Unlike you with your nightie. Wore that for an entire day, you did, right through the coronation of--"

"Shut up! Only because you wouldn't stop to let me change!"

"Oh, now it's my fault, is it."

He was right up in her face now. Clara stuck out her chin and glared at him, and that's when she saw the smile crinkling at the corners of his eyes.


	4. Don't Leave Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A close call. The Doctor reacts.

He ran his hands over her. "You're bleeding--"

"Not my blood."

"Not--"

"It was the boy," Clara said. "I tried but it got him instead of me. I tried--"

Oh, how selfish was he that he was grateful she hadn't managed to pull it off? That he was not now holding her body in his arms and weeping? Or he was, but she was alive, alive, and clutching him as tightly as he held her? He kissed her forehead, kissed her cheeks, kissed her lips, held her tight against his chest and tried to burrow inside her. Swept her feet out from under her, tumbled to the floor with her, rolled himself onto her. On the floor below the console, on top of her, hips pressed against hers, both of them still fully dressed. His tongue in her mouth, her fingers tangled in his hair. Moving over her. Why hold back any longer? Why wait? She might be taken from him at any moment. Might fling herself into the path of an angry god again, and this time lose her bet with the universe.

He undressed her with shaking hands. Mud on her dress, blood on her dress, bruises on her flesh. He ought to wait, ought to take her to the sickbay and tend her wounds and complain and pretend he didn't feel this way, pretend like he always did with her, that he wasn't completely bound up in her. That her name was not written on his hearts, both of them, with letters that would never fade, not until he died and was replaced with another. Oh, Clara, his Clara, silent for once, pliant for once, accepting him without a word spoken.

"Don't leave me," he said, and entered her. "Don't ever leave me."

"I won't ever."

A lie, always a lie, a lie that they meant to be truth when they spoke it, but the universe would never allow it to be truth. But he would let it pass for now, accept that she meant it as much as she could now, in this moment, this fleeting moment, this bubble of time, when he was inside her and she surrounded him and it was their first time. On the floor of the TARDIS, his jacket under her head, her legs wrapped around his, his mouth pressed against her neck.

Orgasm, the little death, the moment of universe-shattering self-destroying surrender to her, when he gave all of himself to her, though she had all of him already. Resting on her, with her, afterward, letting the sweat on his temples cool, letting himself soften inside her until he slipped away. She clung to him.

"Clara," he said, into her neck.


	5. The Massaging Sort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara has a headache.

Fingers on her temples, rubbing just so, sliding up and back and down her scalp, down along the sides of her neck, while the Doctor crooned to her in a husky voice, telling her it would feel better soon. Stress, he said, stress and worry and not enough rest. Silly humans, he said, softly, his breath tickling the back of her neck. His thumbs found the exact places along her spine that made her whimper, pushed in until she wanted to groan in pain, pushed in harder, and then moved somehow just so. Clara felt her muscles yield and release and relax. She breathed out, and in again, on his command.

"Better?" he said.

"Yeah. Where did you learn how to do that?"

He laughed quietly and didn't answer, but continued to soothe her shoulders with strong fingers.

Clara let herself relax into his touch, his sweet welcome touch. Oh, so grateful she was that he had decided he was the hugging sort, at least where she was concerned. The hugging sort, the massaging sort, the cuddling sort, the kissing sort. 


	6. Dissembling Time Lords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sick Time Lords are a PITA.

Gallifreyans were rarely taken sick, he'd told her once. Time Lords almost never. The genetic manipulation that had made them super-intelligent, that had tinkered with their biology until portions of it were unrecognizable, had also given them immune systems of great resilience.

So when it collapsed, it collapsed. And when it collapsed, the great Doctor, Prydonian Time Lord of Gallifrey from the constellation Kasterborous, felt himself a failure and a discredit to his long-vanished species. He felt less than perfect as a Gallifreyan. He was embarrassed.

Or so Clara theorized. It was the only rational explanation for why he was sick but hiding it. The irrational explanations all required him to be a stubborn idiot.

He wasn't moving properly. That's what she noticed first of all. He was stiff, careful, almost timid, and his normal casual indifference about where his elbows went had vanished. Then Clara looked more carefully and saw that he was wearing even more layers than usual: t-shirt, jumper, hoodie, jacket. He kept his hands pulled up into his sleeves.

"Doctor."

"Mmmm?"

"What's up?"

"Oh, the usual. Somewhere in the universe, the sky is burning. The tea is growing cold. Injustice everywhere. Why do you ask?"

As she had thought. No wild gestures, no planet that immediately needed their attention, no hand in hers. One more question to confirm.

She said, "Speaking of tea. Would you like some?"

He blinked and then shrugged.

"Right. Something's wrong. Out with it."

"Nothing is wrong. Nothing. You are, as usual, letting your human imagination run away with itself."

That was, of course, when his knees gave out and he collapsed across the TARDIS console. The TARDIS squawked, blinked furiously, then shut its console down. Clara noted this with part of her attention while she ran around toward him. She caught him--nothing to him, such a wisp of a man-- and got his arm around her shoulder.

"I'm perfectly fine," he said, even as he failed to get his feet under himself. "Go make some tea."

"Shut up. Just shut _up_."

She staggered along with the Doctor leaning on her, complaining the whole way that he was fine. He was, in her opinion, the most annoying being in the universe, and she didn't mind telling him so the whole way across the console room to the corridor leading deeper into the ship.

"Give me some help here, would you?" she said, to the TARDIS. "I need to get him to a bed."

The ship responded by moving her bedroom door along the corridor so it was the first thing she encountered. Thank goodness. She half-carried him across the room and dumped him unceremoniously on her bed. He blinked up at the ceiling and seemed disinclined to get up and bolt out of her room, as he would normally have done. She fished around in his jacket pocket and found the screwdriver. Setting fifty-six, scan. She scanned, listened to the warble, brought up a readout on the wall nearest her.

"You're running a raging fever. For you, anyway. If it were me I'd be dead. Or a zombie. Or something. Also you've got an inflamed throat. In other words, you've got a plain boring viral infection. Nothing spacey. Nothing important."

"Oh." He seemed to have given up on pretense, which was a relief.

"I'm going to make you some tea with honey. And maybe some dry toast. You can try the toast."

"Okay," he said.

When she got back to her room, with tea tray in hand, the Doctor was exactly where she'd left him. He had not made any moves to take off his boots or get under the blankets on her bed. He was, however, huddled up on himself. Clara sighed, set the tray down, and pulled all the blankets out from under him. Piled them over him, tucked them under. Then she burrowed in at the bottom long enough to get at his boots. Unlaced, off, revealing socks with glow-in-the-dark spiral galaxies scattered all over them. Clara smiled, then, because the socks were adorable and that reminded her that she liked this bizarre, absurd, annoying man. Loved him, even, although he tried her patience now and then.

Feet in their socks wrapped up again. Now for the head area. His eyes were open and he was shivering less. She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. Scratched his scalp a little, rubbed circles over his temples. He almost never allowed this kind of touch, but he responded to it now as he did every time: with his eyes half-closed and an expression of utter bliss. How hungry for touch was he? The more he protested against it, the more he craved it. Or so her theory was. Sick Time Lord. Idiot.

"You want your tea now or later?"

"Later."

"Okay."

"Don't go."

Clara touched her lips to his forehead. "Don't you worry."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For vixoftardis on Tumblr: "Twelve is sick, but trying to hide it badly, Clara is annoyed, but can't help but take care of him. If you can work in hair stroking that would be lovely."


	7. Short Circuit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They run out of the house, through the snow, and into the TARDIS. And then...

His hands were trembling and he knew it. He was touching her at last-- she wanted him at last-- and he was shaking. How much sex had he had in his long life? An enormous amount of it. Certainly more than she had had. With men and women and beings who were neither and both. With beings he'd called his wife, and the mother of his child, and so much else.

But here, now, with Clara Oswald, he held her hands in his and he raised them to his lips, and he felt himself tremble.

He wanted to please her, oh how he wanted to please her. He wanted to see that smile, to hear her gasp in pleasure for the first time with him, to feel her shudder under him. To hear her tell him that he was the best lover she'd ever had. That he had shown her the heights of pleasure. The reality? The reality was that he had no idea how to begin. He hadn't touched another being in a thousand years. He hadn't touched himself in that time.

He hadn't even asked her if she would go to bed with him. He opened his mouth but he couldn't speak. All he could do was kiss her hands and clasp them over his hearts and look at her and hope she understood what he was longing for.

"Clara," he said.

"Hey. What is going on in that big brain of yours?"

"I want-- I'd like-- that is--"

"One second." Clara went up on tiptoes and he almost unconsciously bent to meet her. She touched her lips to his. A moment of sweet touch, and then she was looking up into his face, searching for something.

"Were you okay with that?"

He nodded.

"Would you like to kiss me again?"

An even more vigorous nod, for his brain appeared to be non-functional. Faulty.

"Come on, you." She led him by the hand out of the console room, down the corridor to her room, which the TARDIS had faithfully kept for her. Dear old girl, who knew his heart better than he did sometimes.

More kisses, just outside her door, and then he was lifting her over the threshold because it made her laugh and made her face glow in that way that made his hearts ache with happiness. And into her room, and tumbling onto her bed together, more kisses, caresses, and fingers fumbling with buttons. He knew how to do this, yes, how to touch and kiss.

And then he was on his back, looking up at Clara astride him--beautiful, triumphant-- trying to remember what to do, trying to keep up with her. He couldn't, but she didn't seem to mind. She simply smiled at him, and touched her fingers to his lips when he tried to apologize. And then she was on him, and around him, surrounding him, taking him into herself, and he was overwhelmed by her-- her Clara-ness, her mind, her being, the sense of her through all of time and space, through all of his lives, all centered on this moment, on this touch, on his body inside hers, and he was fragmenting, shattering, splintering into a thousand pieces, one for every year he'd lived apart from her, longing for her.

When he came to consciousness again, she was there, leaning over him, pressing a cool cloth against his forehead.

"You okay?" she said. "That was scary. You started babbling about me and then you came and passed out."

He caught her hand and pulled it to his lips. "Hazard of being barely in control of my touch telepathy."

"Oh. _Oh._ That was why I felt-- why I--"

"Did I carry you along with me?"

"Yeah. You could say that. I felt like I was going to pieces."

"I'm sorry, Clara, I--"

"Shut _up_ about being sorry. Please. Never say that again. You just let me know in a way I can never ever forget how much you-- how much--"

"How much I love you." His voice cracked on the words, but he got them out regardless. He'd said it. He'd probably never be able to say it again, not quite like that, but he'd said it once, and she would never forget that it was true. And there was nothing he wanted more than that.


	8. Jammie Dodgers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor has transformed himself into a teenaged boy to infiltrate a school. It didn't wear off immediately. HIJINX ENSUE.

"Still not sure why we had to do this," the Doctor said. "I could have put on a school uniform."

"Trust me. You would not have looked like a student even in a uniform."

He shook his head at her-- his brown-haired shaggy head-- and turned back to her kitchen cupboards.

"How long are you going to be like this?" Clara said.

"A few more hours. It was set to do the transformation for a full Earth day." The Doctor said this with his head inside her cupboards. He had begun methodically rummaging through her kitchen almost the moment they'd returned from the alien-infested boarding school. "Haven't you got any Jammie Dodgers?"

"Second drawer on the left."

He ripped open the package and shoved three at once into his mouth. It was an absurd sight. It was still obviously _him_ , still obviously the man she ran hand-in-hand with every day. She could still see him in the bone structure of his face, in the way he smiled, in the way those eyebrows moved so expressively. But his hair was brown, and there was so much of it springing up from his head, wild and wayward as the man himself was. And that face, unlined, unbearded, unfinished, so sweet and mischievous at once. A boy's face, no longer merely boyish. And at this moment, it was a boy's face stuffed with another handful of biscuits.

The Doctor really was a teenaged boy. At heart and now in body.

Her doorbell rang. Clara went over and pressed the button. "Hello!"

"Clara, dear, we were in the neighborhood and thought we'd stop by and say hello."

It was her father. Clara buzzed them up reflexively, then realized what she'd done.

Clara stared at the Doctor. He stared at her and wedged the last of the biscuits into his mouth. "They're on their way up!" she said.

"So?"

"They're my family! Hide!"

"Why?" He looked genuinely puzzled. "You've had me pose as your boyfriend before. Why not just do that again?"

"Because! Because you're sixteen!"

"I'm two thousand and five!"

"Yes, but you don't look it."

"There you go again, on and on! As if changing my gray hair to brown would fool anybody."

Clara opened her mouth to argue, but it was too late: her door was opening, her family was coming into her flat. Father, grandmother, step-mother: all of them clutching bags from a day of London shopping, trooping right inside her flat as if they belonged there, as if they visited frequently.

Which they did.

And there her father was, shaking the Doctor's hand, introducing himself.

"John Smith," said the Doctor. "But we've met."

"Is this one of your students?" her father said.

"Yes, yes it is." at the very same moment that the Doctor burst out with an irritated "No! how could you think that? How could _you_ think you'd get away with suggesting it?"

"You look like one of my students!"

"I look like who I am! I'm wearing the exact same clothes! I've met them before! Why can't they tell I'm the same person? Are they defective?"

"You were wearing a tweed thing and a bowtie that time."

"Oh! Right. Of course. Sorry." He looked at her to verify that he had indeed apologized at one of the times he was supposed to apologize, and Clara nodded reassuringly. Then he turned to her father's wife and said, most clearly, "I'm the same one who was Clara's boyfriend that time she didn't cook the turkey."

They turned as one to look at Clara, who shrugged helplessly. Either explain everything or explain nothing.

Just then her grandmother came into the kitchen. "Dear, why do you have a police box in your bedroom? It's a lovely antique, but a bit large, don't you think?"

"She isn't an antique!" the Doctor said. His face was flushed.

"Yes, she is. Outmoded the day you stole her."

"She stole me."

"What?"

"She always said so."

Her father said, with an air of infinite patience with a very simple child, "Why is there an antique police box in your bedroom, Clara?"

The Doctor said, quite casually, "Because I parked it there."

"Her bedroom?"

"'Course it's in her bedroom. I'm the only one who ever goes in there after all."

"You're, you're sleeping with a student?" her father said, faintly. Linda looked like she was about to explode.

"Doctor--" Clara said. "This one's out of control."

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scowled at it ferociously. "Mind wipe?"

"Yes, please."

The screwdriver whirred.


	9. The Seventh Sense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor wants to marry her the Gallifreyan way as well as the human way. There are consequences.

It meant so much to him. It meant everything to him, maybe. Clara could see that in his face, in his clasped hands held over his heart. It wasn't a conscious gesture; it was every bit of him pleading. They'd exchanged rings, the token of her species; would she do with him what his species did?

It wasn't a question, really. Now that she knew it was possible, that he wanted it, she was going to say yes to him. He had, after all, said yes to her.

"How do we-- I mean, is there a ceremony?"

"Yes and no. It all takes place in our minds." He gestured between the two of them, pointing at his chest where his hearts were and not at his head.

"Right here will do," he said, pointing at their bed.

"Now?"

"Please."

And there was such a note of longing in his voice that Clara could not have denied him for all the worlds of humanity.

"Okay. Now. Here."

He sat them down on the bed, cross-legged, facing each other. He closed his eyes for some minutes. He looked at if he were meditating. Gathering himself for something. Clara waited for him to tell her what to do next. She was impatient, but she held onto it tight. This was meaningful to him, and she wasn't going to mess it up for him.

The Doctor opened his eyes. Blue, so very blue, so intent upon her.

"May I take your hands?" he said.

Formal, so formal. Clara said, "You may," and held her hands out to him. He clasped them in his.

"Will you join with me?"

"I will." It seemed to have been the right answer. He closed his eyes and a great weariness settled over him. Clara had seen him like this before: when he was looking across time, when he was telling her what would become of them all.

And then she felt him inside her mind, reaching out to her, inviting her to join with him. _Yes,_ she said again, and they were joined.

It was sexual and it wasn't. It was emotional and it was rational. It was their minds joined and the Doctor weaving a golden cable that stretched between them. He was laboring over it, she saw. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose and wet the metal strands as he braided. A hot sun beat down on them mercilessly but he was resolute.

"Can I help?" she said.

"Just be with me."

Clara stood beside him, stroking his hair, while he did whatever it was he was doing. Molten gold, fine wires, something running them and sparking. Energy, flowing from him into what he was building. From his hearts into this braid.

He was on hands and knees, breathing. Clara knelt beside him and wiped sweat from his forehead. He straightened up, with her help, and held what he had made up between them.

"Will you become one with me?" he said, in a language that wasn't hers.

"Yes," she said, in English.

He touched the wires to her chest over her heart. Metaphor became reality. Now it was sexual and it was emotional and it was nothing she had words for. It was something she had to invent an entire language for. They were wrapped around each other and they were sitting on the bed holding hands and they were showing each other their lives and they were laughing.

She had something she hadn't before he'd touched her. She was more than she had been. And he had done it all, had touched her and changed her by pouring something into her. Metaphor was slippery but Clara knew it with certainty, just as she knew with certainty that the new sense she had was an awareness of _him_. Not of anyone else. Of _him_ , the Gallifreyan with his hands wrapped around hers. The man whose name she now knew, because she was joined with him in his culture's commitment ceremony.

"Now you understand," he said, with a voice that was ragged and barely audible to her ears, ringing clear to that new sense. He released her and fell back onto the bed. Clara slumped away from him. Another sense. Sixth sense? No, a seventh. A seventh sense: connection to her partner, her life-mate, her husband, her other half. Metaphor? No. This was _real_. She was changed. They were joined.

"Always with me, now," he murmured. The expression on his face-- Clara wanted to weep, because she'd never seen him looking like that. She'd seen him happy, she'd seen him post-coital, but she'd never seen him beatific.

Beatific, and drained. He wasn't getting up from the bed. Flat on his back, one hand flung out, the other clutching his sweat-drenched t-shirt over his stomach.

"Are you okay?" she said, and even as she spoke that seventh sense was giving her the answer. He had pushed himself past his limits to build that connection. It was something that they had been supposed to do together, that she was supposed to have done half the work for. But she hadn't had the ability-- still didn't have the ability to create that.

He'd done it all himself.

"Idiot," she said, "killing yourself for five minutes of telepathic sex."

"Clara," he said. His eyes rolled back in his head.

The TARDIS made a noise and to Clara's utter shock she knew what it meant. It wasn't words, not as such, not like a person speaking, but there was meaning and emotion. It was concern and a nudge to action, mixed with a bit of comfort: he'd be okay, but she had to help.

"Right," Clara said. "First thing. Clean dry clothes."

Six drawers and an entire closet full of identical copies of his three outfits. The closet was beyond huge; it seemed to recede back forever. Clara blinked, decided to think about that later. She snagged the nearest t-shirt and baggy plaid trousers, took the top pair of boxers from what seemed to be a drawer full of an infinity of boxers, and went back to him. He lay just as she'd left him, eyes rolled back in his head.

"Hey, you blazing idiot, can you sit up at all?"

No response. Well, that was -- something she'd have to work around. But when she touched him, when she took his hand between hers, it changed-- he was there, present, wanting to help, but needing her help to pull him back into his own body. To anchor him there. Clara didn't know how to do that, but apparently holding his hand was enough to do it. Her mental energy supported him.

He blinked, and she could see his irises again. She tugged him up to a sitting position. He groaned, voice still faint, but managed to brace himself while she stripped off his sweat-soaked clothes.

Clean warm clothes on him, blankets swaddled around him, a sugary sports drink in a sippy cup set in his limp hand. The TARDIS burbled. It meant that this was enough for now. Clara touched the wall to thank her, then sat on the edge of the bed. The Doctor sucked at his cup and made a face.

"What flavor is this?" he said.

"Electric flavor. No idea what that means. There were about four hundred bottles of it in the fridge, though."

"I liked the color," he said. "Blue. Electric blue."

"You would," Clara said, fondly. She pulled the blankets up under his armpits and tucked them around him more tightly. She stroked the hair back from his face. Ridiculous hair, so long and so soft. Why did he ever cut it short? He looked so severe with it short, so beautiful with it curling around his ears like this.

He made a face. "Don't fuss."

"You love it."

"Don't."

"Do. Don't even _try_ to lie to me any more, mister."

He glowered at her, but this only made her laugh. He hadn't thought this through properly. Or maybe he had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a tumblr prompt by the-pardoner: Twelve/Clara, soul bonding PLUS resultant hurt/comfort. Like, it's an incredibly intense telepathic procedure, which Twelve has to do all by himself because Clara's not telepathic. Not meant to be done by just one partner, Twelve forges ahead anyway, and afterwards has to be nursed back to health by Clara and the Tardis.


End file.
